


Drop Me A Line

by ninetyfive



Category: Take That (Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, POV First Person, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 11:45:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7975648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninetyfive/pseuds/ninetyfive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Gary and Robbie decide to meet up for the first time in over a decade, the status of their relationship is changed irreversibly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Drop Me A Line

When I open the door and see Robbie standing on my doorstep, it’s like a punch to the gut. Inexplicable anger and regret wash over me, and I immediately feel like going back in and closing the door on him. I don’t. Instead, I find myself taking in Robbie’s tall, dark shape against the background of my white, snow-covered front garden. He sticks out like a sore thumb.

I wonder how time has passed since I saw him last. It must have been years. A decade. I don’t know. I stopped keeping count a long time ago.

He looks better now. Bloody haggard still, but good. Nervous. Anxious. A thin layer of snow covers his hair and shoulder blades. He brushes it off of him when he sees me looking. There’s a wool scarf wrapped around his neck. I’d say he looks handsome, but it’s not a word I want to use. I try to think of something different, a word that doesn’t hold so much aged potential, but for some reason ‘handsome’ sticks. Robbie’s handsome. Always has been, ever since we first met. I guess that was always going to be our downfall.

Robbie clears his throat self-consciously, and I realise I’m being a terrible host. The snow has started falling into my hallway. Small flakes of snow melt into dark stains on my carpet. I tell Robbie to come in, and once I close the door behind us he removes his scarf and starts taking off his clothes. It’s something I don’t want to look at, but I can’t help but be mesmerised by the way his long, black trench coat slips off his shoulders. It’s a beautiful thing; one of those trendy, bespoke ones you get at expensive boutiques. Even I wouldn’t be able to afford it.  

I watch Robbie’s hands as he puts the coat on a clothes peg on the wall, and I notice with a guilty kick that he’s wearing a black t-shirt that shows off his tattoos.

I bloody hate tattoos. Think they’re a bloody waste of money I do, but I can’t help but be drawn to Robbie’s. He’s got more of them since I saw him last, and my stupid mind somehow conjures up an image of his inked arms wrapped around my naked body.

I punish myself for the thought. It’s something I don’t want to think about. Not now, not ever. Not anymore.

Robbie catches me looking, and I blush in spite of myself. ‘I didn’t realise you had so many tattoos,’ I say lamely.

‘Have _you_ got any?’ Robbie asks. He sounds nervous. I’d almost say it’s cute. It’s not.

‘No.’

That ends our poor attempt at having a conversation. Feeling guilty about not trying harder, I try to come up with something else to say, something that will keep us going until we head into the sitting room and have a drink, but the only thing my mind comes up with is Mark’s awful dolphin tattoo and I have to swallow my words. Mark’s a sore topic for the both of us.

‘The sitting room’s just up ahead,’ I say, unable to keep the chat going as I lead my guest down the hallway. My legs feel like jelly, although I fail to see why. We agreed to have this meeting over three months ago. We’ve had plenty of time to cancel it if either one of us chickened out.

Robbie did, once. He sent me an incomprehensible ramble of words saying that he couldn’t go through with it and followed it up with another mail saying he’d changed his mind about cancelling. There were barely ten minutes between them. The next day, he kept ringing me until I had no choice but to pick up the phone and promise him that I wasn’t mad at him. Our e-mails became less stilted after that, and we even shared a few jokes in between our essays until Robbie sent me _that_ e-mail a couple of weeks ago and I was sure he’d cancel again.

I wish he’d told me sooner.

We enter the sitting room. It’s my favourite one, with a combination of light beige walls, pale white woodwork and sea blue fabrics. On the wall, there’s a painting Mark once made me. Rectangular windows overlook the snow white garden, and it’s almost as if the sitting room is one with the outside world. On the floor, there’s a large, beige carpet that my dog always sleeps on. Robbie’s house in L.A. must be a lot modern than this, I bet. I’ve obviously never been, but he Skyped me from his living room once and everything looked bloody minimalist. Cold. Distant, like our relationship. I’d never be able to live in a house like that, but then again I don’t think Robbie ever comes home much.

Robbie’s gaze falls on a series of photographs on my white mantelpiece, and he makes a move as if he wants to have a closer look at them before shoving his hands into his pockets,. He must’ve seen the recent photo of me, Mark, Howard and Jason when we went into the Electric Lady studios in New York last summer to re-record a couple of songs we’d worked on. Rob doesn’t talk about the band much, and I can only guess it’s because he envies us.

‘It’s nice, this,’ he says before heading to the sitting area framed by the beige carpet. He decides to sit in my favourite chair, so I have no choice but to vacate the chair in front of him. There’s still a lot of space between us, about four or five feet. I reposition the pillows behind my back so I have something to do while Robbie continues to look around him.

‘Did you do all of this yourself, Gaz?’

I cringe inwardly. I wish he wouldn’t call me that. _Gaz_. It brings back far too many memories of the good old days. They weren’t good at all.

Finally, I answer his question. ‘I did, yeah. Took me a year to finish this room.’ I am struggling to keep the conversation going already. What is there left to say that we haven’t mentioned in our e-mails already? ‘I, um, I’m thinkin’ ‘bout moving actually, to be honest with you. It’s no use commuting back and forth with all the things we get up to in London these days.’

A faraway look clouds over Robbie’s features when I mention the ‘we’. We; Take That. The band without him. ‘How’s everyone doing?’ he asks. The question comes out strangled, like he’s bloody nervous still. Every now and then he looks like he’s about to start biting his nails. I wish I knew what he was thinking.

I realize I should probably do a better job at making Robbie feel at ease, but it’s been a while since anyone came to visit and I’m torn between not giving a shit about his feelings and being terrified that the simplest comment will hurt him. Hurt _me_. I’m still bitter about the confession he made in his e-mail, but at the same time I do care about him. I don’t want to say something that will hurt him just because _I_ am.

I try to answer his question as well as I can. ‘They’re good, yeah.’

He shifts in his chair. _My_ chair. ‘Mark?’

I ignore the sick feeling in my stomach. ‘Yeah, also.’

‘When did you last see ‘im?’

I don’t want to deal with Robbie asking questions about my bandmates. It feels too private, still. I lie to Robbie that I saw Mark just yesterday – it’s actually been weeks – and awkwardly tap my fingers on my knees when my companion decides he doesn’t want to push the topic further either.

I never thought it’d be this difficult. I knew that our e-mails back and forth were full of empty promises, guilt, apologies and, eventually, delayed confessions that I still have no idea how to deal with, but this is something else. It’s like I’m meeting one of my exes from before the comeback, from before I became famous even, and that I’m about to discover that I have nothing in common in them anymore.

I have nothing in common with Robbie.

That’s what my head is making me believe. My heart is telling me something else.

Needing some time alone to think this meeting through, I get up from my sofa and tell Robbie I’m going to put the kettle on. Robbie gets up too. ‘I’ll help,’ he says.

‘There’s no need to, mate.’

‘ _Please_ , Gaz. I’m feelin’ fuckin’ nervous as it is.’

This honest admittance takes me by surprise. I could tell he was nervous, but I didn’t think he would openly admit it. It almost manages to melt the ice between us.

‘All right,’ I say, slowly, carefully, ‘but I don’t want you puttin’ any sugar in me tea.’

We leave the sitting room together. Robbie lingers in front of the gold and platinum records in the hallway, then mumbles an apology and joins me in the kitchen, my other pride and joy. Like the rest of the house, it’s been painted and decorated in warm, earthy tones that never fail to make me feel at home. Once Robbie sees the espresso machine in the corner, he changes his mind and announces he’d like a cup of coffee, please.

I tell him to help himself while I boil water for my green tea. He gets the hang of the coffeemaker pretty quickly, and he’s already sipping his caffè lungo when the water boiler stops gurgling and a soft _click_ tells me it’s safe to use. I wait until the water has cooled down to about seventy degrees and pour the water right on top of the leaves in my tea infuser. The fresh smell that fills the air is incredible and almost makes me forget how strange I’m feeling still.

At a slight loss for words like me, Robbie looks around the kitchen like he’s never seen one before. Eventually his gaze lands on the fruit blender that I use for my healthy fruit juices. It’s surrounded by a bowl of fruit. ‘You use that a lot?’ he asks, with a nod at the blender.

‘Got to. I can’t eat unhealthy things anymore.’

‘You do look like you’ve been workin’ out, Gaz,’ he points out before putting his coffee cup to his lips and taking a big, healthy gulp of sugary caffeine. He glances at my chest and my arms that I’ve covered with a tight dress shirt, and it sends a strange thrill through my body that I wish I hadn’t felt. I don’t know if the comment is meant to be a compliment or a sly dig at what I used to look like (I guiltily hope it’s the former), so I just say that I have and pray that Robbie doesn’t ask me to elaborate. 

‘I haven’t been to the gym for a year to be honest,’ Robbie says. He puts his hands on his own belly for emphasis and pouts sadly, although I don’t see why. His stomach’s not taut, but not flabby either. It looks good like the rest of his body. It’s another thing I wish I hadn’t noticed about him. ‘Exercisin’s such a fucking chore, it does my head in.’

I shrug noncommittally. ‘It’s all right.’

Another silence falls over us. It’s as though the hours we’ve spent writing to each other has rid us of something to talk about. It’s what I’ve always imagined online dating to be like.

What I don’t see coming is that Robbie’s thinking the exact same thing. ‘Is this how you imagined it?’ he asks after our silence has gone on too long. He finishes his caffè lungo and puts his cup on the kitchen countertop before awkwardly scratching the back of his neck. ‘I mean, meetin’. You and me.’

I lean my arms on the countertop and clasp both of my hands around my teacup. It makes me feel warm inside, but it doesn’t get rid of the coldness I feel between us. It’s as if Robbie has taken the cold, snowy wilderness from last night’s snowstorm inside with him.

Or maybe I’m just the one enabling it. 

I regard Robbie closely. He doesn’t look at all like how my memories of him in the nineties shaped him. He doesn’t look like someone who would say bad things about you behind your back. He wouldn’t abandon you in a London hotel, not anymore. I’ve always been so hell bent on hating him for what he and the media did to me that I’ve never noticed how young his eyes still are.

I decide to go for honesty. ‘I didn’t think it would make me feel so cold inside.’ This makes Robbie cast down his eyes, and I feel guilty for putting it so bluntly. I try to be kinder. ‘Thing is, Rob, I don’t even know what to _say._ I really don’t.’

Except I do. Deep down. But I don’t know how to put it. I don’t _want_ to. I went into this meeting thinking that seeing Robbie would erase my feelings for once and for all, that Robbie would take back what he told me in his e-mail and that he’d be exposed as the dick I always thought he was, but he hasn’t. It’s just made everything worse.

‘Yeah, neither do I,’ Robbie admits. He absently runs his finger over the rim of his coffee cup on the kitchen counter. I’m beginning to wonder if he’ll ever mention the e-mail. ‘Maybe this was a bad idea.’

_Maybe_ , I think. But we also both agreed to it. We both made a promise to have a chat, God knows why. We both made a promise to do better after what Robbie admitted to me, to see where this would end, but we’re both doing a pretty lousy job at it because _I_ stubbornly don’t want to admit still feeling the same and _he’s_ just a big nervous baby.

For some reason, the thought reminds me of something I worked on with Howard during the weekend: a set of lyrics about two lovers who, ironically, have failed to communicate like me and Rob. I decide to show it to him. ‘C’mon,’ I say, keen to have something to talk about. ‘I’m gonna show you somethin’.’

I tell Robbie to head back to the living room, teacup still in hand. I walk right behind him to make sure he doesn’t disappear, and I can’t help but notice the curve of his arse in his jeans. It looks nice. Firm. I’d be lying if I said I’d never ogled it before.

I try to think of something else and train my eyes on the back of his head. Once we reach the sitting room, Robbie steers clear from my favourite chair and instead vacates the sofa. He must have seen me looking at him. He tries to make himself more comfortable by stretching his legs and putting one of my sea blue pillows behind his back while I reach for my iPad on the top of a shelf. I turn it on and hesitate in front of the sitting area before I decide to sit next to him.

There are only two or three feet between us, and I think it’s the closest we’ve been for years. Every single line of permanent ink on his left arm becomes visible, and I stubbornly try to focus on the tablet in my hands. I tell myself I’m not meant to be looking at his body like that anymore, but it hasn’t stopped me from noticing that he’s put a lot of effort in his appearance today. More so than usual. His hair is combed and gelled up. His clothes are clean. They smell fresh. His eyes have a nervous sparkle to them. And on closer inspection, he doesn’t look as tired as I thought he did. He wants to make an impression. He wants to make this work.

I blush and look away when I realize I’m staring at him again. I swipe and tap my way to my beloved Notes app and eventually find a text file with a ridiculous nickname. I hand Robbie the tablet.

On first glance, the file looks like no more than a big jumble of words, a series of unrelated sentences, but then I see a light flicker in Robbie’s eyes. Recognition paints his features. I almost think he’s smiling. ‘This is one of mine, Gaz!’ he says, amused. He glances at the text again and holds the tablet askew. ‘I _think_.’

I nod. ‘It’s the one you sent me three weeks ago, remember?’ He looks at me blankly. ‘The one you were having trouble with?’ He remembers. ‘Me and How tinkered with it cos I felt bad that you couldn’t figure out how to finish it. You don’t have to use it if you don’t want to,’ I add quickly, and I hope that I haven’t insulted him by tinkering with something that’s essentially his. ‘It’s just something I felt like doing is all.’

Thankfully, Robbie looks more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him. I feel oddly content. I think we’re finally ready to have this meeting. Properly.

‘You did this for me, Gaz?’ he asks, humbled.

‘Yeah.’

There’s nothing else to say. I took a song Robbie sent me and put my own spin on it. I didn’t do it to impress him or make him feel crap about himself; I did it because I can, and because I wanted to. (And because it’s one hell of a song once you look past Robbie’s spelling mistakes.)

Something makes Robbie laugh, and my heart flutters along. I’d forgotten it could do that. ‘I hate to admit it, Gaz, but this song’s better than mine!’

I wave a casual hand in the air, but deep down I feel a little bit smug. ‘I only changed the lyrics around, mate. The rest is all yours.’

Robbie glances at the tablet he’s holding. ‘Have you got any more songs?’

‘It’s gonna cost you, Rob,’ I joke.

The sarcasm goes over Robbie’s head. He fumbles with the tablet, nervous again. ‘I’m not sayin’ I wanna use them, I’m just curious.’

‘I know,’ I say quickly. ‘I was joking.’

Robbie lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah.’

He looks pleased. Relieved. Instantly, so do I. I can’t pinpoint when it happened, but I think the shards of ice that separated us have finally broken down and melted like the flakes of snow Rob took into the house with him. I know it’s only because we’re both songwriters, but I think we’ve found something we can talk about at last. We have something in common after all. Of course we have.

I instantly feel better. ‘C’mon, give me my tablet,’ I say. ‘I’ll show you some goodies.’

Robbie looks absolutely thrilled. Spurred on by his enthusiasm, I quickly finish my green tea and manage to find about seventeen unfinished lyrics files. They’re no more than memos, really, fragments of lyrics and songs that I came up with in the shower, but it’s enough to keep us occupied as I discuss the various melodies I’m thinking about using.

I notice Robbie has come closer. I smell the scent of his cologne, and for once I don’t try to block it out. It smells good. I wish I could smell it on me.

We talk about every set of lyrics we come across. At first, Robbie’s content to just sit back and listen to my thoughts. He looks a little nervous still, but less so than before. A couple of minutes later, he feels confident enough to start giving me feedback about rhymes, melodies and song titles. It’s nice. We make a good team. He contributes a lot of concepts I’d never dare writing about. I find myself privately wondering whether Robbie could ever come back to the band.

We talk about music for what feels like the blink of an eye until I’ve run out of songs. He’s come closer still, and every now and then I feel his knee brush against my own. I don’t mind anymore.

But this conversation feels like it’s reached its end.

‘I can’t believe I ever called you a crap songwriter,’ Robbie mumbles after I’ve closed the final Notes file.

Again, this statement takes me by surprise. Robbie has never apologised for the things he said about me. Ever. Up until today he’d never even complimented my songwriting at all, which was something I learned to live with because it’s hard to compete with someone who wrote a song as successful as _Angels_. It feels surprisingly good to be praised by him.

‘I should never have said it,’ he adds regretfully. ‘You’re really talented.’

I try to smile at him. ‘There’s a lot we shouldn’t have said back then.’ My mind jumps to his e-mail. ‘And I lot we _should_ have.’ 

The words are out before I realise it. I should take them back, but I can’t. I don’t think I want to.

His eyes flick up at mine. He knows instantly what I’m talking about. His e-mail. _The_ e-mail; the one in which he admitted always having loved me. His love letter to me.

We’ve never talked about it.

If you want to understand what prompted Robbie to send me that e-mail, you first need to know how I felt about him in the nineties. I bloody adored him. Loved him. He was the first guy I ever fancied, and it showed. I didn’t know how the fuck I should talk to him. Performing alongside him was all right, but then we’d go back to our hotels and have fun in the billiard room with the others and I’d turn into a bloody idiot. I was the caricature of a guy in love, and people still assumed me and Rob hated each other. I guess that worked in my favour in a way.

I always had a stupid, hopeful suspicion that Robbie liked me back, but it was hard to tell with all the girls that were throwing themselves at us. Robbie took a different girl home every other day and I figured I might as well follow suit as long as it kept the rumours at bay. But my feelings kept growing. No matter how much sex I had, Robbie was always in the back of my mind.  

And there was no denying the way he looked at me.

One night, I got quite drunk at the hotel and decided to head to Rob’s room and just fucking tell him. I barged in, told Robbie to sit down on the bed and I spilled out every thought I’d ever had about him. Including the bad ones. After my confession was done, Robbie got really angry at me and showed me the door. He left the band the next week.

From that day on, I always blamed myself for falling for him. I blamed myself for liking a straight guy and I was fucking fed up with myself for being so pathetic and confessing to him. I should have just kept my mouth shut.

Then more than ten years later an e-mail pops into my inbox. It’s from Rob, and it’s a three-page long letter about how he lied about not liking me to protect his career and that he’s still in love with me today. He claims that he wants to get back in touch to see how things are and maybe meet up again one day and ‘just chill’.

Convinced my head was making things up, I deleted the e-mail. A minute later I dove into my trash folder, brought back the e-mail and marked it ‘unread’. It took me three hours to write a cold, calculated response that I didn’t mean. 

‘I know,’ Robbie says finally. He sounds sad. Regretful. He watches, absent-mindedly, how I turn off my iPad and put it on the table. ‘I should have told you sooner.’ He looks at me with those sad big eyes of his. ‘Don’t you ever think about what would have happened if I had?’

_Shit_.

My throat feels tight. I feel light-headed by just realizing that we’re finally having this conversation. Everything in me wants to tell Robbie that I no longer think of him like that, that I’ve gotten over him, but I haven’t. I never have. His e-mail did the complete opposite of scare me. It didn’t push me away like Robbie feared it would. It made me _keener_.

I think about what I should say. I don’t know. I’ve never pictured it.

My voice no longer sounds like my own. ‘Every day,’ I say eventually. I pronounce the words so softly that it takes Robbie a while to process them.  

Eventually, the message kicks in and I just _feel_ the conversation take a different turn. Robbie’s voice breaks. ‘Still?’

I don’t want to say the word, so I just nod. _Yes_.

He looks at my lips. I look at his, and I find myself drawn to them inexplicably. Already, I feel a familiar desire that I haven’t felt for a while. It warms me up inside. My body wants this but my mind doesn’t, so I look away and hope Robbie will do the same. He doesn’t. He places his hand on top of mine and sends another heatwave through my every vein until I feel like I’m burning up.

I look at him again. A wordless message passes through us. Suddenly, we both want something. ‘ _We can’t_ ,’ I whisper regardless. I hear how unconvinced I sound.

Robbie nervously shuffles in his seat. Later I’ll realise that it wasn’t nervousness but just keenness to get things going. ‘Why not?’ he asks.

I wish I knew. ‘It’s been too long,’ I lie, but I’m too transfixed by the curve of Robbie’s mouth.

‘We’ve been Skypin’ each other for three months, Gaz,’ he counters, and I know it’s true. I know how he looked at me during those calls: terrified, nervous, bloody anxious – the first call even featured him smoking a fag in his pyjamas because he was ‘fucking shitting himself’, as he charmingly put it – but there was always something else there, something stronger than fear: _desire_. I’d look at a live image of him and sometimes all I saw was that. He still wanted me like I did deep down.

I try to come up with a better excuse even though my heart is beating like mad. I can’t believe I’ve let our conversation lead to this. ‘It’s late,’ I say, even though it isn’t. Outside, the winter sun is still showing down on the white blanket of snow.

Again, I find myself inexplicably drawn to Robbie’s mouth. ‘Gaz, please,’ I watch him say. I don’t know what’s happened to those nerves of his. I don’t know what have happened to mine. ‘Just this once.’

I give a shake of my head, but my body doesn’t really mean it. It’s not what it wants. The grip on my hand tightens, and I don’t know who initiates it when my life changes forevermore and I feel Robbie’s lips on mine.

My heart skips a beat. Then it never stops racing ever again.

Robbie’s pressure on my mouth is tender and light and not at all what I thought it would be. His thumb softly rubs the back of my hand.

A big red flag in the back of my mind tells me this is a big mistake, guaranteed disaster, but I ignore it. The pillow behind my back gently cartwheels onto the floor with a soft _thud_ when I move forward. I lean in closer to fill the miniscule gap between us, and Robbie holds back. He’s teasing me. He’s loving it. I open my eyes to see him grinning back at me with those sparkling, mischievous eyes that made me fall in love with him, and he kisses me again. Harder.

My mouth opens into a gasp and Robbie slips his tongue inside. He’s less gentle now. He’s _hungry_. He bites my bottom lip and I taste blood. It’s beginning to feel more like what I thought kissing him would be like.

I put my hand on his chest. I ball the fabric of his black t-shirt in my fist. The angel on my shoulder is telling me I should push Rob away, that I should stop before the kiss can spiral into something worse, something infinitely more dangerous than anything I’d ever done, but I don’t listen to it. I listen to the devil and kiss and challenge Robbie until a lack of air forces me to pull back.

‘Fuck,’ I rasp. It’s all I can say. It’s all I can do. I no longer recall how I felt when I first saw Robbie standing on my doorstep. I can no longer picture the way his trench coat hugged his features or how a thin layer of snow stuck to his shoulder blades. In a couple of months, I’ll remember this right here. Kissing. _Wanting._

Before I can formulate a more coherent thought, Robbie kisses me again. This time, it sends a shockwave through my body that makes me want to kiss his neck. I do. For now, it’s me who’s in control. He sighs in ecstasy when my stubble brushes against his skin, and I make sure I kiss him there properly. The response is instantaneous. I kiss and bite his neck, and when I suck his ear he lets out such a filthy little _moan_ that I can’t help but laugh.

He looks at me again with those big, green eyes of his. It makes me melt. ‘Are you makin’ fun of me?’

‘Never,’ I say before I kiss him again.  

I don’t know how much time passes until we both decide we want more. There are a lot of things I don’t know anymore.

We don’t spend any time talking it over. I stop kissing him and get up from the sofa, and he wordlessly follows me to my bedroom. He looks more nervous when he’s not kissing me, so I take his hand and squeeze it as I show him to my room. The walk feels so long that it’s like I’m taking a boy or girl to my room for the first time again and about to lose my virginity. I’m not. I’m a million second and third and fourth times away from that now.

I know Rob is too. He dips near to kiss me again, bravely, before we somehow stumble onto my waterbed and I find Robbie lying on top of me.

It’s not a position I’m used to, but it’s good. He kisses my neck, and now it’s _my_ turn to moan. Again, I’m rendered unable to speak in anything but monosyllables. I groan, loudly, and beg for more.

More is exactly what I’m getting.

I feel Robbie’s fingers touch the skin underneath my shirt. They feel cold, but I don’t protest when he starts unbuttoning my dress shirt. He wants to be in charge. I let him.

‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ he purrs into my ear. It leaves an electrifying tingle on my skin, and I struggle for words as he undresses me.

Rob gingerly pulls open the shirt once he’s reached the final button, and I feel a draft of cold air run over my naked chest when he lets the fabric slide down my sides. Then Robbie starts kissing me there inch by inch, and I feel hotter than ever. His tattooed fingers play with my chest hair. His tongue expertly draws circles around my nipple until he moves to my stomach and starts kissing me there. Every kiss feels lighter and better than the next, and I find myself arching my back and covering my face with my hands as if I can’t quite believe we’re doing this either.

I can’t believe we’re doing this.

‘Don’t stop, Rob,’ I moan, and he doesn’t. He keeps going until his mouth reaches the hem of my trousers and he looks up at me again with that achingly familiar schoolboy nervousness. It’s like we never grew up and I’m back in tour rehearsals again, staring into Robbie’s eyes wishing – hoping – he feels the same way about me.

‘You sure you want this, Gaz?’

I’m not. I’m fucking terrified.

‘Go slow’, I tell him.

Robbie’s terrified too. He looks at my belt, hesitates, then reaches up to kiss me again tenderly. ‘I’m so sorry I ever turned you down, Gaz,’ he says. I can see the intensity of his words reflected in the eyes that I’ve so often wished would look at me properly. Now that they are, it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. ‘Will you forgive me?’

I don’t get the chance to respond. His mouth pecks my forehead before he butterfly kisses his way down my chest and abdomen again, but I’m too overwhelmed by Robbie’s apology to feel it. I don’t even notice that his hands are shaking when he unbuckles my belt and pulls my trousers off my legs and feet.

I hated Robbie when he turned me down in his hotel room in the nineties. I hated him even more when he left the band a week later and left the four of us to clean up the mess he’d made. We made it look to the crowds that our transition to a four-membered boy band was as easy as learning a new choreography, but it wasn’t. It was bloody hard work.

And I’d never seen Mark cry, but I did the month Robbie left. He was absolutely inconsolable, and I wanted to curse Robbie for being such a coward and ruining so many people’s lives, including our own. I felt so much negativity towards him that I almost vowed never to love anyone ever again. It just wasn’t worth it anymore.

But now I’m watching Robbie strip me of my boxers and curling his fingers around my hard cock, and I realise I could never have hated him after all.

I can tell, instantly, that Robbie’s good at this. He wasn’t just some straight guy I had a crush on. He’s done this before.

And I already know exactly with whom.

Robbie sees me looking at him wide-eyed, and he takes my cock into his perfect mouth. My hips jerk in surprise when it slides all the way down to the back of his throat. He’s tender. He’s slow. I don’t know what to do with my hands. He sucks me gently at first and then speeds up when my body tells him to. His fingers never waver from the base of my cock, where he’s applying just the right amount of pressure until I become convinced that we’ve been through this already.  

After a while, he comes up to kiss me again. I think I can taste myself and pull Robbie deeper into the kiss while he continues to stroke me. He’s so good at it that I can already feel pre-cum trickle down my cock.

I decide I want more.

‘My turn, Rob,’ I rasp in between wet, passionate kisses, and I put a pillow behind my back and motion at him to come closer.

Robbie catches my drift immediately. He takes off his shirt a bit too quickly for my liking and manages to pull down his trousers and boxers in one go. They rest at his ankles. He claimed he’s not been to the gym for a year, but it doesn’t show. He looks amazing. Fuckable. He steadies his hands against the wall, nervous again, while I grab his cock and suck him in without warning. The sound he makes next makes my cock twitch.

He’s not as big as me, but I’m not complaining. The sweetness of his skin surprises my taste buds, and I savour the taste. I relish it. I take him in deeper. He moves his hands from the wall to the back of my head and I gag, briefly, when his cock touches the back of my throat.

He’s vocal. He’s loud. He’s in charge exactly when he needs to be. I _love_ it.

I savour it all until I’m forced to catch my breath. My hands trail up the hairs on his chest and I know that we’re both thinking this is the weirdest thing we’ve ever done. It’s also the best, by far.

My hands rest on the two tattoos on his abdomen. They’re two birds. Swallows, I think. It’s not until then that I realise why he must’ve had them done. If it’s meant to be an order, a demand, then I’m more than happy to comply. I do. I continue sucking just the tip of his cock. It’s messy, but I don’t mind. Each time I push my tongue into his slit Robbie moans harder, and I make a mental note of all the sensitive spots on his beautiful, painted body.

Finally I look up at Rob again to stare into those beautiful, troubled eyes of his, and I feel nothing of the frostiness I did before. I no longer try to fight the images my mind wants to conjure up. I no longer think of emails and arguments and think only of how happy I am to be here, with him. He’s the bane of my life and the only person I’ve ever loved, and for some reason that thought makes me brave. Brave enough to ask him to take me. Right here.

He looks surprised. I think he had something else in mind. As did I. I was also expecting a lot more spitting and cursing.

‘You sure, Gaz?’ he asks.

I nod. I am. I kiss him, _there_ , to prove it. ‘I want you,’ I say.

Robbie smiles at me, and it’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. He dips down for another peck on the lips and we lie there kissing and rubbing each other for what feels like blissful eternity. I’m still wearing my unbuttoned dress shirt, but Robbie quickly strips it off of me before taking off the pants and boxers that still dangled at his angles. We’re now completely naked but for the socks on our feet. We don’t bother taking them off.

We continue touching. Grinding. Rubbing. My hands are on Robbie’s back throughout. His lips are on my neck. A jerk of my hips when I feel Robbie’s cock against my own reminds us both of what we’re about to do, and we look at each other.

‘Condoms?’ Again, it’s Robbie who takes charge. I’m beginning to suspect he was faking his nervousness when he came here.

I nod at my bedside cabinet. ‘Second drawer,’ I say. I hate how nervous _I_ sound. It’s not like I’ve never bloody done this before. I clear my throat and say it again, but it just comes out strangled.

Robbie rolls off of me and I stare at this naked back as he opens the drawer and fishes out the things he needs. He’s got a tattoo there too, on the small of his back. It’s a stave of _All You Need Is_ _Love_ , notes and all. It reminds me of the question I asked him when he took off his coat that evening. ‘How many tattoos _do_ you have, Rob?’

He closes the drawer and crawls back on top of me again. He kisses my mouth. Then my chin. He’s moving down slowly. He already knows exactly what I like. ‘Dunno,’ he breathes against my neck. I don’t know what he’s done with the condom.

‘More than ten?’

His mouth reaches my chest. It painstakingly skips my nipples before stopping at my belly. ‘Yeah.’

I sound nervous when I speak. I can feel Robbie’s every breath against my skin. I no longer even recognise my own voice when I ask if he’s got more than twenty tattoos.

Robbie hums against the base of my cock when he lifts up my legs with ease and kisses me right where it tickles. _Fuck_.

The feeling of Robbie’s tongue teasing my perineum stops me from talking completely. I moan, hard, when he spits on my arsehole and spreads his saliva across my skin with his fingers. I no longer feel like I’m on planet Earth when he slips his index finger inside of me and pushes it in and out slowly. For already the second time that evening, Robbie makes me struggle for words in the best way possible. All I can do is arch my back and urge him to go faster, faster, faster.

Robbie grins when he slips in another finger and pushes them in as deep as he can. His mouth returns to my cock, teasing me with the tip of his tongue while he finger fucks me as well as his short fingers allow him.

‘I think I prefer you like this, Gaz,’ he laughs, and I don’t know what to say. Instead, I let out a stifled moan when he comes back up to kiss my mouth, his fingers still arched perfectly inside of me. His hands grip and squeeze and open me up inside constantly, and eventually I decide I don’t want to be played with anymore.

‘Fuck me, Rob,’ I tell Robbie against his mouth. Our foreheads are touching and my eyes are closed because I’m terrified that if I open them again Robbie will disappear. ‘ _Please_.’

He kisses me again and again. He lets out a nervous breath against my skin that tells me he feels the same way I do. ‘Okay,’ he says. _Okay_.

I don’t make a sound. I keep my eyes closed. I don’t watch as Robbie slathers my ass with lube. I try not to listen to the sound of the wrapper of the condom being torn. I can only close my eyes and feel a familiar, sinful stab of pain shoots through me when Robbie pushes into me and fills me into more ways than one. I’m suddenly overwhelmed by the urge to hide away in shame, to cry and pretend none of this is happening, so I cover my face with my hands again and hope Robbie won’t look at me.

‘Gaz, look at me. Gaz.’

I do. I lower my hands and see that Robbie looks as terrified as I feel. ‘We’re gonna be all right, eh? You and me?’

I don’t know. I really don’t.

Robbie sees me hesitate, so he kisses my forehead and whispers something in my ear that I’ll never let him forget.

Finally, I nod and tell Rob to go on. We’re gonna be all right.

He sits upright again. He lifts up my legs with his hands and starts moving. I can tell that he’s nervous by the way he thrusts, but then he calms down and finds his rhythm. Most of the time he’s slow, gentle, but then I ask him to speed up and every single part of me feels like it’s on edge.

I no longer feel cold inside. My hands are shaking when I move my hand to relieve myself, and Rob offers to do it for me. Instead, I use my hands to grasp the sheets beneath me like I’m terrified that I’ll fall off the bed and wake in a world where Robbie isn’t here. I don’t think that’s a world I want to live in anymore. I want to be here, in a bed with Robbie, in a universe where we can be friends and lovers and everything in-between.

But I never want to hate him anymore.

The next couple of minutes are a complete blur. Each thrust stretches and strokes me better than the next, and eventually I have to beg Robbie to come back down and kiss me again. He does, and I wrap my arms around him so tight that he chuckles in surprise. ‘I didn’t know you liked cuddlin’ so much, Gaz,’ he says, teasingly, before he slips out of me and pushes back in again like he knows exactly what he’s doing. The only thing I can do is wrap my arms around his body tighter and hope he doesn’t stop.

We lie there, thrusting and rubbing, for as long as it takes us to reach the edge. I come quietly against my stomach while Robbie makes a bit of a show of it and comes, hard, when I curl my nails into the small of his back.

I don’t know what to say afterwards. Neither does he. We just continue kissing each other, his cock still inside of me, until we come off our clouds and we have no choice but to look at each other again. When we do, it’s like I’m looking at the nineteen-year-old Robbie again. He looks terrified, young, but also completely and utterly ecstatic. Happy. It’s the happiest I’ve ever seen him, and I think it suits him.

I trail my fingers down the tattoo on his chest. For a lack of something to say, I ask him what it means.

‘It’s embarrassing, Gaz,’ he says, red-faced, and I realize for the first time how much I love hearing him call me that. I don’t hate it as much as I thought I did. It makes me feel close to him. Intimate. It makes me realize how far we’ve come.

‘Why?’

He buries my face into my neck. ‘Because it’s written wrong,’ he mumbles before kissing me in the hopes of diverting the conversation. It almost works.

I laugh when Robbie nibbles my ear. ‘It’s _written_ wrong?’

I take Robbie’s embarrassed silence as final confirmation, and instead of closing the topic of his tattoos it makes me want to know more. It’s like an insight into his life and personality that I never got in the nineties and the years thereafter.

I slide my hands down Robbie’s back while we lie there as one and kiss.  Robbie’s pause to stop for air between kisses allows me to ask him why he picked the tattoo of a Beatles song.

‘Dunno,’ he shrugs. ‘I just wanted it.’

It’s not the answer I was waiting for. I move my hands further down his body while he kisses me, and suddenly I’m feeling braver and keener than ever. ‘Then what about . . . this one,’ I say, suggestively, before sliding my hands down the curve of Robbie’s ass and squeezing him there. I want more.

Robbie looks down at me. He looks surprised. ‘You wanna go for round two already?’ My body says yes, but I wisely say nothing and wait for Robbie to take charge. ‘I’d just like to cuddle for a bit if you don’t mind, Gaz. I don’t want you to give me a heart attack!’

I’ll be honest, my heart gives an odd little kick at the word ‘cuddling’. I didn’t process it when Robbie mentioned it earlier, but it’s taken on a different meaning now that Rob’s no longer fucking me. I usually like cuddling – love it, actually –, but now that Rob’s mentioned it so openly I’m suddenly terrified that if I do it with him it officially means I’m still in love with him. That we’re in love.

I don’t know why that thought has only just occurred to me.

‘Are you okay, Gaz? You all right if we cuddle?’

I swallow hard. I never in a million years imagined meeting Robbie again would lead to this. I thought I would finally get over him. Except I didn’t. I haven’t. I did something a lot worse than not getting over him tonight, and I’m suddenly beginning to realise that something simple like cuddling and fucking also means dating and keeping secrets and having the entire shitstorm of rumours kicking off all over again. I don’t know if I’m ready for that yet. It’s why Robbie rejected me, after all.

But cuddling also means that a decade of bloody pining and hating each other never took place. It’ll allow us to start over like we should have when I went to Robbie’s hotel room in the middle of the night. Our relationship will be a blank page in the songbook I’ve reserved for songs about him.

The worry I felt ebbs away. Of _course_ I’m all right with cuddling. Why wouldn’t I be? I’m in love with him, after all.

I wrap my arms around Robbie’s already familiar body again, and I feel his head rest contently next to mine. His body breathes out a relieved exhale at the same time I do. I feel safe having him here.

‘Okay,’ I say finally. ‘Let’s cuddle, Rob.’

I feel Robbie’s breath against my temple when he speaks. ‘For the rest of the evening?’

My hands rub the small of his back. I can no longer remember what I was doing before Robbie came back into my life.

‘Forever.’


End file.
